Assignment of solutions to cases: Comments on Bentham and the formal theory of legislative action

Författare

Lars Lindahl

Redaktör

Guillaume Tusseau

Summary, in English

The chapter starts from Bentham’s idea of an ideal code to be constructed ab origine, grounded on natural and universal principles. Lindahl maintains that Bentham had great confidence in the future role of logic, but that deontic logic is too narrow to do justice to the richness of Bentham’s ideas. The paper outlines how a formal theory of legislative action can be constructed for a rational “Bentham legislator”. The paper deals with the construction of general norms with so-called “limitations”, how the theory of legislative action can be harmonized with the logic of imperation, the use of “declarative” sentences for imperation and for report of imperation, and with the role of complex legal concepts (for example, “ownership”, “obligation”) within a Bentham code.

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